People often say that psychology has a long past but a very short history. That’s because processes of the mind and human behaviour have been explored for a long time, starting from philosophers in Ancient Greece. But as a discipline, studied extensively at higher academic and research levels, psychology has only existed for less than 200 years. Many psychological studies have helped advance our knowledge and have further developed this discipline. But how much have all studies contributed to our understanding of various psychological processes?
Well, there was a particular period in the 20th century that saw a number of experiments that would most likely raise a few eyebrows nowadays due to ethical reasons. Although some of these experiments added new information about human behaviour, they left a very traumatic and sinister mark in the history of psychology. Here’s one of them!
It’s 1961, Yale University, USA. Two people are brought to a room where it’s decided (through a choice of cards) which one of them will be the one asking questions and which one – the person answering these questions. The truth is, only one of these two people is the real participant whereas the other is an actor (confederate), not to the participant’s knowledge. The cards are rigged in such a way that the actor is always chosen as the one answering the questions. The actor is then tied to a chair with wires and he is told to remember pairs of words. The real participant is seated in an adjacent room, together with the experimenter, where they can’t see the actor.
The participant is told to position himself next to an impressive machine with a row of switches and under each there is a voltage number (50V, 100V, 150V and so on). He’s also told that when a switch is flipped, the machine transmits shocks to the actor in the neighbouring room. What he isn’t told, though, is that it’s a bogus machine which doesn’t do anything. Are you starting to see where this is getting at?
The participant’s job is to ask the man in the room next to him what the pairs of words were (through microphone and speakers, remember that he can’t see him!). For example, if one of the pairs was “dog-river”, the participant would say “dog” and would expect to hear the other person say “river”. The actor gives around 60% wrong answers on purpose. Every time he makes a mistake or can’t remember the word, the participant is told by the experimenter to administer a shock to his partner by flipping one of the switches on the machine. With each next wrong answer, the participant has to give the next stronger shock in line (e.g., 150V for the 3rd mistake, 175V for the 4th and so on). 450V was the highest voltage, on the far right part of the machine.
Even though he wasn’t really shocked, the actor would make noises as if he was in pain and would often shout “Let me out! Please stop!”. The participants felt scared when they heard the shouting but were told by the experimenter (who was with the participant in the same room throughout the whole experiment) to continue with the administration of higher voltage shocks when the actor made a mistake. Eventually, before they reach 450V, the actor would stop responding (on purpose!) and naturally the participants were frightened that something must have gone terribly wrong in the room next door. They were still told by the experimenter to administer the final shocks as lack of response was equal to wrong response. What would YOU do? Would you flip the switch?
I’ll stop here because you might probably ask: what was the purpose of this torturous experiment anyway? Well, Stanley Milgram, the lead psychologist who was in charge of the experiment, wanted to see how many participants would go on to flip the final switch when told to do so by an authority figure (in this case, the experimenter who was with them). What they found was quite shocking (get it?) – almost 2/3 of the participants in the study flipped the final switch just because they were told to do so. You can watch the original video from the experiment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTX42lVDwA4
Milgram wished to assess the power of obedience when following orders from an authority figure as he was fascinated by the way individuals were almost blindly following deadly orders especially for the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany during World War II. Milgram’s predictions were that no more than 40% would be ready to flip the final switch (450V which, in real life, could potentially kill a person). Pretty sure his jaws dropped when he witnessed the results!
Bear in mind that this was done in the early 60s and you’ll most likely end up in prison if you try to replicate this nowadays! Because it was (and still is) a controversial study, it did get replicated many years ago and it was found that if participants were able to see the other person through a glass wall, less than 1/3 went all the way to the final shock.
What this example goes on to show is that humans do have a darker side in their mind and behaviour. For instance, we have the capability of harming someone as a result of obeying an individual with greater power than us. #creepy
Stay tuned for PART 2 and more examples from the Dark Ages of Psychology!
Humans 101 